Many French Muslim Converts a worry

[Semsem]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/19/in...l?pagewanted=1

Europe Fears Converts May Aid Extremism
By CRAIG S. SMITH

Published: July 19, 2004


T.-PIERRE-EN-FAUCIGNY, France — The Courtailler brothers grew up in this medieval Alpine town, children of a butcher who went broke, who divorced his wife and moved to a job in a meatpacking plant far away. Two of the three brothers, David and Jérôme, educated in Catholic schools, foundered in drugs until they found religion: Islam.

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Within five years of David's initial conversion at a mosque in the British seaside resort of Brighton in 1996, the brothers embraced many of the leading lights of Europe's Islamic terror network. David, 28, is now in jail, and in late June, Jérôme, 29, turned himself in to the police in the Netherlands, days after he was convicted by a court there of belonging to an international terrorist group.

The Courtaillers are part of a growing group of people who found a home in Islam and then veered into extremism, raising concerns among antiterrorism officials on both sides of the Atlantic that the new recruits could provide foreign-born Islamic militants with invisibility and cover, by escaping the scrutiny often reserved for young men of Arab descent.

A handful of Westerners have already been arrested on terrorism charges. Their experiences, the authorities fear, could foreshadow a deepening problem.

"Converts will be used for striking more and more by jihadist circles," said Jean-Luc Marret, a terrorism expert at the Strategic Research Foundation, in Paris. "They have been used in the past for proselytism, logistics or support, and they are operationally useful now."

Islam is Europe's fastest-growing religion, and many experts say that while there are no reliable statistics, they believe that the number of converts has grown since Sept. 11, 2001, in many ways because of the campaign against terrorism.

Antoine Sfeir, a French scholar who is writing a book on the trend, said a small number of converts, many of them disaffected and often troubled young people, saw the current wave of Islamic terrorism as "a kind of combat against the rich, powerful, by the poor men of the planet."

Only a small fraction of Western Islamic converts sympathize with terrorism, and even fewer become engaged in terrorist activity. A few dozen militant converts have been identified so far. A report by France's domestic intelligence agency, published by Le Figaro, estimated last year that there were 30,000 to 50,000 converts in France.

However small the number of them drawn to terrorism, the police are focusing on this subset as a serious and growing threat.

"The conversion to Islam of fragile individuals undoubtedly leads to the risk of diversion to terrorism," the intelligence agency's report said, adding that radical groups have recruited converts because they could cross borders easily or serve as front men for renting accommodations or providing other logistical support.

A Transnational Trend


The trend is not only happening in Europe.

Jack Roche, a British-born Australian taxi driver, converted to Islam, trained in Afghanistan and returned to Australia, where he was recently sentenced to nine years in prison for trying to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Canberra. While planning the attack and videotaping the embassy, he was questioned by a guard, whom he told that he was interested in the district's architecture.

"Is that what it is?" the guard, clearly believing him, casually replied in a conversation recorded on the video and later presented at Mr. Roche's trial. "I didn't think you were going to bomb the joint or anything."

In the United States, Jose Padilla, held by the government on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks, converted to Islam in 1992 while in a Florida jail.

Both David and Jérôme Courtailler, the French brothers, moved freely through Europe without attracting the kind of attention focused on Arab men, even after the French authorities were notified when David was spotted leaving Afghanistan.

In an interview, one French anti-terrorism official said many recent converts were women, further complicating the standard profile.


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[Mediocrates]

What fools. ALL of the terrorists who attacked the US and Spain and who threaten the west came from Europe. Europe is the breeding ground, not Teheran or Mosul or Mecca or Islamabad. It's Hamburg and Lyon and Zagreb and Brixton. And they are not dung-burning Bedouins either they are students, engineers and children of the white middle class.

It's too late for Europe to suddenly be concerned that some converts are radicalized because the very environment which is helping Islam to grow so rapidly is what fuels the radicals. White converts to Islam are a distraction or, at worst, they will form the vanguard of legitimate political activism for Islam in Europe. That is, these are the people who will eventually elected muslims to the highest ranks of power in Europe. But as always they will in turn be coopted by the violent cadres who for the most part are not citizens in Europe.

Hi,

Do you remember that the terroriste who made the 9/11, were living in Usa ?

May be they have made their school in others states, but at last, it was in your state, that they were living ! So ask your CIA or FBI what they have done, and stop saying: it's France or Another state fault !!

Medkorp

Originally Posted by Mediocrates

What fools. ALL of the terrorists who attacked the US and Spain and who threaten the west came from Europe. Europe is the breeding ground, not Teheran or Mosul or Mecca or Islamabad. It's Hamburg and Lyon and Zagreb and Brixton. And they are not dung-burning Bedouins either they are students, engineers and children of the white middle class.
It's too late for Europe to suddenly be concerned that some converts are radicalized because the very environment which is helping Islam to grow so rapidly is what fuels the radicals. White converts to Islam are a distraction or, at worst, they will form the vanguard of legitimate political activism for Islam in Europe. That is, these are the people who will eventually elected muslims to the highest ranks of power in Europe. But as always they will in turn be coopted by the violent cadres who for the most part are not citizens in Europe.

[Mediocrates]

Originally Posted by medkorp

Hi,

Do you remember that the terroriste who made the 9/11, were living in Usa ?

May be they have made their school in others states, but at last, it was in your state, that they were living ! So ask your CIA or FBI what they have done, and stop saying: it's France or Another state fault !!

Medkorp

Nonsense they came to the USA already radicalized, armed, funded and given clear instructions on what to do. They came from Europe after living in Europe and becomming radicalized in Europe for years. They came to Europe as ordinary middle class Arab students from the middle east. During their stay in Europe they BECAME murderous maniacs. They went to radical mosques in Europe they attended jihad lectures in Europe.

Europe needs to understand IT IS the problem - for whatever reason it breeds muderous zealots who then spread like cancer all over the world.

Hi,

Originally Posted by Mediocrates

Nonsense they came to the USA already radicalized, armed, funded and given clear instructions on what to do. They came from Europe after living in Europe and becomming radicalized in Europe for years. They came to Europe as ordinary middle class Arab students from the middle east. During their stay in Europe they BECAME murderous maniacs. They went to radical mosques in Europe they attended jihad lectures in Europe.

How funny, you live in america but you know much more than us who live in France and Europe !

How can you say that that, if only a single pourcent of all arabs were terrorists the number of attack will be much more ofen !

And in Europe the number of mosque il very low, as the cimetary for muslim !

Europe needs to understand IT IS the problem - for whatever reason it breeds muderous zealots who then spread like cancer all over the world.

Europe have some muslim and arabs it's true, but the number of radical muslim is far less that you think. The last law about the hijab in France is a good example ! If the number of radical muslim were living in France, why they say nothing ?

Medkorp

[Mediocrates]

Polemic twaddle. They DO say 'something'.

[Mediocrates]

<insert obligatory 'did I hit a nerrrrrrrrve?' comment here>